The weak part of this article is advocating rental property. I never wanted to deal with tenants who may have problems making ends meet. Those are more likely to be amongst those who don’t plan. My money went into Vanguard. Only one representative to deal with rather than a cross section of lesser individuals.
My brother in law has a late-paying tenant who gets daily deliveries from Amazon. Go figure.
“Nothing in this article we don’t already know. “
Then why the post?
Short form:
Everyone knows what to do. Few do it.
In our area rental property is one of the riskier investments that one can get involved with. The laws here are all steeply slanted in the deadbeat’s favor. When you end up with one who decides or never intended to pay their rent in a timely manner... they can cause incredible damage to your property before spending the thousands of dollars it takes to get them out.
The easiest way in our area to become financially independent is to become a Democrat politician and get in on the grift.
I am one that never had a 401K or any other type of retirement account. I owned my own small service based business with my Father who started it in 1971. I worked very hard for 40 years and ended up with 3 paid for houses, sold my business to my number one guy and have a nice cushy $100K plus per year retirement. I am going to sell one house this year and ..... whatever I want. I never like the idea of being a landlord, so I just keep them empty sort of, we go to all of them routinely.
Why is rental property investing the first item on the list, that requires having something to invest in the first place?
I can tell one how to lose money.
Start a business. Then do real good and hire employees, buy some machinery and software. Then have the government shut down the industry for the sake of a Chinese virus. Then, try to keep the doors open and be required to pay employees still, as required by state law, and pay the rent on the lease. Then stick through it after all the employees are let go and the customers out of business. Restructure to stay above water through a degenerate child sniffing democrat administration who did everything in his power to destroy small manufacturing businesses.
I had financial independence when I was deep in debt. I found work that I loved to do even if I was not getting paid.
I found that I could keep reinventing my work by focusing on skills and abilities in areas that I liked. When you make work fun, challenging, and exciting, you are free and independent.
Further, having a net worth of millions doesn’t make one independent. The person is still dependent on the assets they have acquired.
Invest in yourself first.
1. Live below your means no matter what it is.
2. Salt away at least 25% from as close to the first day as you possibly can
3. Tax avoidance is a crime, tax management is not. Tax terms have changed many times in my last 50 years, do the best you can with that.
4. Dividend investments, buy good ones early, accumulate, manage, don’t necessarily hold all of them, Mixed ETF is probably the easiest way now.
5. Teach your children to work, pray they are smart, encourage and help them but don’t carry them.
If you like rentals fine. I have had them and hated them.
Balanced portfolios are just OK. They are a compromise that perform the same way, mediocre. They will probably have to be harvested instead of producing and they probably won’t leave a legacy if that is your thing. I don’t like them.
Gold is up 40% so far this year
There are two basic forms, physical and etf
Us eagles and gld